Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue

This paper introduces the topic and unique format of the section that follows, on psychoanalytic work with transgender children. We first review the apparent impasse that characterizes our field regarding clinical work with gender diverse kids, as well as the reasons we pursued a live dialog to push thinking forward. Then, we outline the structure of the entire section, in which four contributors offer short essays, followed by a transcribed and edited version of the dialog we facilitated, which uses these essays as a starting point. We conclude with reflections on some of the themes that arise in the dialog, and implications for all of us who work in the arena of gender and young people.

Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue

In March 2021, Hannah Wallerstein and Jordan Osserman facilitated a live dialogue over Zoom on the subject of transgender young people, with four psychoanalytic clinicians and thinkers. The conversation draws on short essays submitted in this section of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child as a springboard for discussion. It has been transcribed and edited for length and clarity, and is reproduced here. Questions explored include the differences surrounding gender identity in childhood versus adulthood, the use of medical interventions for children experiencing gender dysphoria, the tension between psychoanalytic neutrality and affirmation, and the ethical stakes of working in this field.

Waiting for other people: a psychoanalytic interpretation of the time for action

Typical responses to a confrontation with failures in authority, or what Lacanians term 'the lack in the Other', involve attempts to shore it up. A patient undergoing psychoanalysis eventually faces the impossibility of doing this successfully; the Other will always be lacking. This creates a space through which she can reimagine how she might intervene in her suffering. Similarly, when coronavirus forces us to confront the brute fact of the lack in the Other at the socio-political level, we have the opportunity to discover a space for acting rather than continuing symptomatic behaviour that increasingly fails to work.